The latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach

The latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach — the new journal promoting the accurate understanding and comprehensive teaching of evolutionary theory for a wide audience — is now published. The theme for the issue (volume 4, number 4) is Evolution and Medicine, edited by Kristin P. Jenkins and Michael F. Antolin. Articles include "Diagnosis: Evolution"; "Evolutionary Medicine and the Medical School Curriculum"; "Enhancing the Teaching of Evolution in Public Health"; "A Clinical Perspective in Evolutionary Medicine"; "On Designing Courses in Evolutionary Medicine"; "Developing a Curriculum for Evolutionary Medicine"; and "Evolution and Medicine: An Inquiry-Based High School Curriculum Supplement." Plus there are various articles on the teaching of evolution, book reviews, and commentaries. Remember, access to the journal is free through the end of 2011, so now is the time to peruse the contents!

Also included is the latest installment of NCSE's regular column, Overcoming Obstacles to Evolution Education. In "Evolutionary Medicine: A Key to Introducing Evolution," NCSE's Eric Meikle and Eugenie C. Scott discuss how examples and concepts from evolutionary medicine can be used to improve the teaching of evolution across the board. "We suggest that teachers consider starting discussions of evolution with a medical example, and use such topics throughout their teaching in order to stimulate student interest and provide real-life examples that can hit home," they write, concluding, "Adding a careful exposition of how evolution informs medical practice and research — the same medicine that students can see at work healing the wounded, preparing cures, and devising remedies — will help not only to convey the power and beauty of evolution in general but also to assuage qualms about human evolution in particular."